A&M-Texarkana Math Students Finish in Top Tier of Competition

A group of Texas A&M University-Texarkana math students fared very well in a recent Differential Equation Modeling Competition put on by the Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities.

According to the press release, the competition featured more than 400 students from 88 institutions. The awards for the contest were broken down into 3 categories; Successful, Meritorious, and Outstanding. The trio of math majors from A&M-Texarkana received the Outstanding award, which means that they finished in the top 25 percent of the participating teams.

The problem the A&M-Texarkana students worked on was finding a better solution for sorting different kinds of recycled materials. The team set out to make recycling more convenient by allowing people to combine different types of materials in one container, instead of having to collect them separately. They used a series of equations to show how items of different weight and material could be sorted by dropping them from a specific height and allowing them to fall through a stream of air moving at a given speed.

A&M-Texarkana’s team was made up of Daniel Collinsworth (a mathematics and electrical engineering major), Garrett Mason (a mathematics and electrical engineering major), and mathematics major Caleb Watson. The team competed alongside institutions like The United States Air Force Academy in Colorado and the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Dr. Gary L Stading, Dean of the College of Business, Engineering, and Technology at A&M-Texarkana, was pleased with the results. “I think it speaks volumes about our students when they go out and compete so well against students from other universities,” Stading said. “It says a lot about the quality of instruction here at A&M-Texarkana. We’re very proud of them,” he added.